From Steve Aldred comes this question…

I do have a question for you that I hope you can answer, it relates in a way to the question a few weeks back about Joe Kubert's covers for Jack Kirby’s final Kamandi issues after he returned to Marvel. When Jack Kirby came back to Marvel in the mid 70's he was soon doing a lot of covers for them across most of their superhero titles.

Was this simply to let the wider Marvel readership know that Kirby was back at the company or was there another reason for it? As with Kubert's Kamandi covers, I never thought that they were the best of Kirby's work especially where he had been asked to draw some of the newer characters that he was obviously not familiar with.

Marvel had Jack doing covers because the folks in charge then — and this would have included Stan — felt that Jack was their best choice for the job. Simple as that. He did not design most of them. In most cases, he was given a sketch that had been generated in the office and approved there…something drawn by Marie Severin, Dave Cockrum, Al Milgrom or one of about a half-dozen others. When a cover featured characters that Jack didn't know, they'd send him reference — or at least, they were supposed to. He told me that often, the reference material was insufficient or missing altogether. And they were almost never for stories he knew.

I agree with you that these were not the best Kirby work. My admiration for Jack's skills is huge but I don't think he drew many memorable covers after about late 1967 when Marvel increasingly began giving him roughs by other artists. This was not long after Carmine Infantino took over as the guy in charge of covers at DC. Previously, each DC editor had supervised the designs for his or her comics, usually working with the artist who would do the finished art or at least, the pencils for the finished art.

There was some panic at DC around 1966 when Marvel was gaining in sales. Most of the folks in power at DC then thought the Marvel books were badly-written and badly-drawn — or at least, nowhere as good as the concurrent DC product. They had to come up with an explanation for why readers were increasingly opting for Marvel over DC and Infantino supplied one they could accept: Marvel's covers, he said, were simply more exciting.

DC's too often had the hero standing around uttering word balloons that described the premise of the story. Marvel's had the heroes in action. Here are two covers that were on newsstands in February of 1965. Which one do you think would attract more buyers?

That was why Infantino was brought into Management and assigned to design or at least supervise all their covers. In response, Marvel began having more and more covers designed in the office — this at a time when Kirby for personal reasons was trying to cut back his trips into town to the office.

So more and more, Marvel covers started with Stan Lee working with an in-house artist — most often then, Marie Severin — to generate a sketch that would be finished (usually) by someone else. As good an artist as Jack was, I don't think you got the best out of him by having him draw a cover that someone else had laid out…especially a cover for a story he hadn't read and in which he had no emotional involvement.

What he handed in was always workmanlike and professional but he just didn't have the same level of inspiration even when it was for a comic where he'd written and drawn the insides. Even in those cases, he usually drew the cover long after he'd finished the story and it had left his mind. Jack was always about the story he was doing now.

Also, I think that at the time — and this had nothing to do with Jack — comic book covers from most publishers were getting too cluttered with word balloons and blurbs and story titles and logos that distracted from the art instead of enhancing it. I don't recall many exciting covers by anyone in the mid-to-late seventies, a topic we've discussed at those "Cover Story" panels I moderate at comic conventions. As my amigo Sergio Aragonés has said, "If you need to put a lot of words on a cover, it's not a very good cover."

But I agree with you: I don't think Jack's covers during the period we're discussing were him at his best.

How do I feel about rules that The Ten Commandments must be posted in every classroom? Seems to me like this would be a good time to remember the words of one Mr. George Carlin…

If you're still interested in fact-checking of last Thursday's debate, one of the best fib-exposing websites — factcheck.org — has this pretty good report. And they also fact-checked the other "debate" last Thursday, which was the shadow version by independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

There are an awful lot of online discussions 'n' debates as to whether Joe Biden should step aside and let someone else be the Democratic nominee. I also see a wide range of articles and arguments as to how possible — legally or practically — it would be to make that switch. Not that I have any say in the matter but I'm on the fence because I lack a couple of pieces of vital information. One big one would be how often he's like the guy we saw on the debate stage in Georgia on Thursday night and how often he's like the guy we saw in North Carolina on Friday.

I think it would also be worth seeing some poll numbers over the next week or two before deciding. We may think Biden's numbers will take a big plunge because of his debate performance but we also thought Trump's would if he was convicted of 34 felonies or if it came out that he'd cheated on his wife with a porn star. If nothing else, we should be learning that these days, the poll numbers do not always do what a person might expect.

For those of us who think it is vital that Donald Trump never again resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I think it comes down to this: If we're prepared to trust Joe Biden with being President for the next four years, we oughta trust him to do the right thing as to staying in the race or stepping aside. One of the reasons I've supported him is because I think he's the kind of man who would put The Country ahead of his personal concerns. Unlike his opponent.

There was a speech given today in North Carolina. Watch at least a few minutes of it and then I have a question to ask…

Where the fuck was this guy last night?

I never met the man but I had the privilege to see Martin Mull perform here and there, now and then. I recall him popping up as an unbilled opening act at times for someone I went to see…and he was usually better than the someone I had gone to see. He was laid-back, calming, very much audience-friendly and extremely funny. In one appearance — at the Ice House in Pasadena, I think — there were some folks in the crowd who'd come to see just him, not the headliner, and had brought along Martin Mull albums to get them signed.

That was the first time I knew he'd done record albums and I rushed out and bought them. They were very good and quite original. Someone had a real good idea when they cast him for the show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and then brought him back to play his twin brother for Fernwood Tonight.

In 1997 when actor-announcer Bob Ridgely died, I attended what was easily the most hilarious memorial service I've ever been to. Mel Brooks spoke. Thom Sharp spoke. Chuck McCann spoke. A long list of hilarious people spoke. Martin Mull stole the event with the funniest speech I've ever heard at one of those events. If they have a memorial service for him, I hope one of his friends gets up there and plagiarizes that speech. I think he would have loved that.

This A.M., I awoke to the present challenge, which is how to get on with the work I must do and the problems I must solve without devoting too much of my energy and grey matter to a problem I cannot even vaguely affect. The news makes Armchair Advisers out of all of us. I have a friend who works at a plant back east that bottles energy drinks and he spends a lot of every day thinking about how to fix the situation in Gaza. Cynically, I'm not sure there is a solution and realistically, I don't think that if there is, he's going to be the person to formulate it and put it into place.

I can dope out what I'd do if I were Joe Biden or a close adviser to Joe Biden but all I can really do with any idea I have is post it here on my blog where, so far, I haven't even achieved the first step in the abolition of cole slaw. I can also remind myself that if I were Joe Biden or a close adviser to Joe Biden, I'd have a lot more information (tons of it) that might help me shape my thinking. For one thing, I'd have a good answer to the question, "How often is he like that?" If the answer to that question is "Most of the time, lately," it's a very different problem from if the answer is "Never. He was sharp as an X-Acto knife Wednesday evening."

I read a number of interesting articles this morning including this one by David Kurtz. Here's a piece of it that I thought I'd share with you…

For their part, many partisans tend to observe debates and campaigns like sports fans, rooting for outcomes over which they have little or no control. I don't recommend that approach for your mental health, but it also sucks up an enormous amount of human and emotional capital, like spending all day on the sofa watching sports on TV instead of getting out and exercising yourself. The partisan-as-sports-fan risks becoming more deeply invested in their preferred outcomes and the roller coaster of emotions along the way than in the underlying cause.

I've never been able to get into sports. Once upon a time, I cared if the Dodgers won but only because it made my father so happy. I (of course) noted how unhappy it made him when they didn't and it didn't strike me as a fair trade-off. Maybe if he'd had money on the games and got a big payoff when they won, okay. But I don't care who wins the World Series or the Super Bowl because I don't get anything — monetary or otherwise — out of it. I don't even get the satisfaction of pretending I had something to do with the victory.

Following politics is a little different — who wins can affect my life and the lives of others around me — but I still don't have anything meaningful to do with the victories. I vote…that's about it. In the 2020 Presidential Election, the Biden/Harris ticket got 81,282,632 votes. Without mine, they would have gotten 81,282,631. Maybe, giving myself way more credit than I deserve, I also did the cheerleading that helped get a dozen other folks to go out and vote. Don't get me wrong: I'm still going to do everything I can to prevent Donald Trump from getting a second term and turning the United States into a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Trump Organization, an American privately-owned conglomerate owned by Donald Trump who is, in turn, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the highest bidder.

But I think right now, the most meaningful contribution I can make aside from donating cash is to trust that Biden and the people around him will do the right thing. I dunno if that will involve Joe Biden stepping up or stepping down. But I do know I have things to do where I can make more of a difference. I think I'll go do one of them.

They're popping up all over. Here's one from PBS. Here's one from NBC. Here's one from CNN. Here's one from the Associated Press. Here's one from The New York Times. Here's one from ABC. Here's one from USA Today.

There's an awful lot of duplication in them.

Obviously not a good night for Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. He gave much aid 'n' comfort to those who want to argue that he's too old to have a second term and he failed to counter a flood of outright lies from his opponent. (Here's a quick, incomplete fact check.) It disappoints me that The Truth doesn't matter to so many people in this country. There were moments in what I watched where I wish they had a rule that Gavin Newsom could tag in for Biden.

Like everyone else who's projecting what this will mean for the actual election, I have no idea what this will mean for the actual election. I've floated before on this blog and with friends the notion that we may not see one or both of those guys on the November ballot. I've never thought it was likely…just possible. It seems a fraction more possible now.

I'm not watching the first debate between the two old guys running for President of the United States. At least, I'm not watching it live. One of the great things about the Internet (and VCRs and streaming services and some other innovations) is that we're no longer slaves to our televisions. We don't have to be in front of them at 6:00 sharp to watch a program that starts at 6:00 sharp. We can watch it later or the next day or years from now. I have a lady friend who was not born in time to live through the news coverage of the Assassination of John F. Kennedy so one night, we sat here and watched it together, kinda pretending it was "real time" when it wasn't.

I'm not expecting a knockout punch tonight on the debate stage or even anything that makes it impossible for either side to claim an inarguable victory. Trump especially, if you beat him soundly in tic-tac-toe, would still claim it was rigged and he won. But I'll watch it later — maybe — when I feel like watching it if I feel like watching it. I have work to do and besides, MeTV Toons is running Bugs Bunny cartoons and what's happening on that screen is much more realistic.

The fine folks who run Comic-Con International today announced…

Jo Duffy, Ralph Newman to Receive 2024 Bill Finger Award

Jo Duffy and Ralph Newman are this year's recipients of the 2024 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.

"Since 2005, we have been honoring writers whose work in the comic book industry has not, we feel, received the attention and recognition that their work deserved," Evanier noted. "This year's posthumous recipient wrote hundreds if not thousands of comic book scripts without, as far as we can tell, ever getting his name on any of them. That's about as unrecognized as you can be."

Jo Duffy has written comics including Power Man and Iron Fist, Catwoman, Batman, Wolverine, Fallen Angels, Nestrobber, Glory, Crystar, Elvira, Defenders, Punisher, and Star Wars, as well as the English-language edition of Akira. She has written short stories, essays, the comic book biography of Saint Francis, and an adaptation of Kipling's Jungle Book, and is the co-writer of two Puppet Master movies. She was managing editor of Epic magazine and an editor at Marvel comics, handling such titles as Elektra, Daredevil, Dreadstar, Groo, Doctor Strange, Hulk, and ROM. She co-edited Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein.

Ralph Newman (1914–1989) was born in Michigan and spent his professional life doing advertising cartooning and then magazine cartooning. His first sale in the latter field was to Amazing Stories, and he later worked as an "idea man” for other magazine cartoonists and as a story-and-gag man for Paul Terry's Terrytoons animation studio. This led to him writing comic books for Timely Comics (now Marvel) featuring Terrytoons characters such as Gandy Goose and Sourpuss throughout the 1940s; when the license shifted to the St. John's publishing company in the 1950s, Newman shifted with them. It is not known precisely when he also began working for the Harvey company, but its longtime editor Sid Jacobson called him the most prolific writer the firm ever had. During his years there, Newman probably wrote for every character who had any kind of longevity, including Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Sad Sack, Little Audrey, Little Lotta, Richie Rich, Spooky, Little Dot, Hot Stuff, The Ghostly Trio, and many more — all without credit. If you read Harvey comics during the company's peak years, you couldn't help but read stories written by Ralph Newman. He left us in 1989.

The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 at the instigation of the great comic book artist and cartoonist Jerry Robinson. It was his way of preserving the memory of his friend and colleague, the late Bill Finger. Evanier explains, "At the time, Mr. Finger rarely received credit as co-creator of Batman and of the entire, voluminous mythos and supporting cast that surrounded the Caped Crusader. Gloriously, the name of Bill Finger now appears on Batman movies and comic books. That doesn't stop us from continuing to hand out awards bearing his name to other writers who, in the opinion of the committee, have not received sufficient reward or attention for what they have contributed to comics."

In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.

The major sponsor for the 2024 awards is DC Comics; supporting sponsors are Heritage Auctions and Maggie Thompson.

The Finger Award falls under the auspices of Comic-Con International: San Diego and is administered by Jackie Estrada. The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer's Comic-Con International on Friday, July 26.

From a recent Daily Show: Lewis Black camps it up…

I have a number of questions very much like this one from Lee Grainger…

Reading what you had to say about the MeTV Toons Channel made me all the more unhappy that I can't get it in my area.  What should I do?

Well, first of all, make sure you really can't get it in your area. Use this search engine to check that out. A lot of times, it's on a sub-channel and a lot of people don't know how to get those…or have TV sets so old they can't get them. But check.

In Los Angeles, it's on two over-the-air channels, KSFV (27.1) and KAZA (54.3). If you're in L.A. and you get your TV signals via an antenna, can you get Channel 27 and/or 54? If you can, you may need to have your TV rescan for newly-added channels and if you do, MeTV Toons might appear. Instructions on how to rescan are on that page I just linked you to. If it doesn't, use Google, find the phone number of one of the stations that's supposed to carry what you seek and ask them if it's on the air yet (it might not be) and if it is, how to get it.

You may be told that your TV set is too old to get sub-channels. If that's the problem, this might be a good time to consider a new set. They're real cheap these days and you might find yourself getting a much better picture and/or a lot more new channels.

Next possibility: Do you get your TV signals via a cable service? If you do and they ain't got it, here's something you really oughta do and I'll put it in all caps and bold so as to "shout it" a little at you: CALL YOUR CABLE COMPANY AND TELL THEM YOU WANT IT!!!

Do this when you have a little time because if your cable company is anything like the ones I've had and canceled, they may keep you on hold for the life expectancy of a Seychelles giant tortoise. But there's also a good chance you'll reach someone in time to still go out and vote in the November election. Ask for Customer Service and if the person you get there doesn't know if they're planning on adding it or how to pass along word that one of their subscribers wants it, ask to speak to someone who knows something. Who knows? There might actually be such a person on the premises.

If that fails, do you have a Roku TV? One that gets its signals via the Internet? Then you can get MeTV Toons. All you have to do is to subscribe to either frndly or Philo. frndly is cheaper but each service comes with a lot of other channels and you might decide that Philo is worth the higher price.

I used to get my TV from Spectrum but I canceled it for a number of reasons, some of which you may be able to guess from the paragraph above the one above this paragraph. I have great super-fast Internet service — obviously not from Spectrum — so I got a Roku TV and am very happy with it. Those sets aren't that expensive either and you get an infinite number of channels you never heard of.

I just discovered one that airs old episodes of Celebrity Bowling where you can tune in and watch Billy Barty and Dick Martin bowl against John Schuck and Michael Ansara. That is a real channel and real must-see television. Whoever said The Sopranos was the greatest thing ever on TV didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Disclaimer: I am not an employee of nor do I get paid anything by MeTV Toons. I just like the channel and I have a feeling I'll like it even more as it matures, gets wider penetration into the marketplace and its programmers get a better feel for what its audience wants.

For several hours yesterday I had my TV on and tuned — "tooned" is more like it — to the new MeTV Toons channel. At times, it felt like it should be called the "All Bob Bergen Promos with Occasional Cartoons Channel" but that would be okay as they were wise enough to engage one of the best cartoon voice guys to be their House Voice. (Bob, by the way, will be on our Saturday Cartoon Voices Panel at Comic-Con and he's also on a MeTV Toons Panel which I think is on Friday.)

I'm quite pleased with this channel. Yeah, they run some cartoons that I don't care for…and I never thought I'd see an episode of Go Go Gophers introduced as a "Classic Cartoon." But there are enough goodies there to delight anyone. I'm curious as to how their lineup will change as they get a better idea of what their audience is tuning in to see…or tuning out. I hear they have dozens and dozens of shows that are not part of their current schedule but can be rotated in when the time comes.

I'm also curious about the advertising. I saw almost no commercials that were geared towards kids and a lot that I'd expect to see on a network that targets older folks, including one for an anti-aging creme and one for a law firm that specializes in estate disputes. Is that the audience they're hoping to attract? How will it change as they get more data on who's watching? I do like that they aren't jamming a lot of ads in and that the cartoons I watched all seemed to be uncut — except for one racial gag that in a Tom & Jerry that was trimmed.

I'm watching right this minute. Atom Ant is on and they just had a commercial for Grand Canyon University, followed by one for Tide detergent, followed by one for the GMC Sierra truck, followed by one for the Studio Scent Diffuser from Hotel Collection. That last is a device that will allow your home to smell like a five-star hotel. Are these advertisers likely to get a lot of nibbles from folks who are watching Atom Ant cartoons? I'm not being sarcastic.  This is an honest question from someone who's 72 years old and who at the moment is watching Atom Ant.

Oh no, wait: That's over and now I'm watching "Case of the Missing Hare," a Bugs Bunny cartoon directed by Chuck Jones ten years before I was born. Maybe this is more of an "all ages" channel than some might have thought.

Folks keep asking me if I'm going to watch the Presidential Debate on Thursday evening. This is assuming it happens as planned. My answer? I dunno. I'm not sure I can watch Donald Trump for that long in one sitting.

Everyone discussing this online is talking about raising or lowering expectations. My expectation is that neither man will fare so poorly that his boosters can't declare him the obvious winner by a million-billion miles. This whole thing about "performance-enhancing drugs" is another Trump alibi/distraction. There's zero evidence that Biden gets a shot in his incumbent butt before any major address but if you're really invested in the premise that he can barely walk or talk, I guess you have to come up with some explanation when he actually walks or talks.

And of course, the back-up excuse if Trump doesn't do well will be Jake Tapper. Trump dwells in a world of "Heads, I win…tails, it's rigged!"

Me, I think it's way too early for this. Neither man officially has his nomination yet. One hasn't even named his running mate. The polls don't mean much this far ahead of Election Day but even if they did, they've been essentially tied for some time…as anyone who understands the term "margin of error" knows.

Assuming these are the two guys on the ballots in November, I think Biden's going to win because Trump's reminding me more and more of a crook being pursued in a high-speed chase but whose car is coming apart, piece by piece. It's inevitable that he's going to crash but I don't think this debate will be the spike-strip that does it. I think it'll just further polarize a battle that has already become too polarized for the issues to matter as much as they should.